The End, The Beginning
by Cowpuppy
Summary: One Shot. Saturos is at the end of his life. He is about to die. As he passes, he remembers his life, the events that shaped him, the people that changed him. What are his own reasons for his quest? First-person perspective, contains some Proxshipping.


This story messes with time a bit. Don't worry if you get confused.

* * *

This is the end. There was once a time when I had hope for the future. I believed that it was possible that I could reverse the fates of my people, deliver them from their hardships. I believed that I could act as their savior, bear the weight of their dreams upon my shoulders, and carry them into a bright new future. There was a time that I believed in the inherent goodness of all beings. I believed that all Proxians had within them an underlying good nature, and that humanity's crimes came only from their ignorance. I did not hold any individual human responsible for my people's suffering.

It has been a while since I have had such innocent thoughts cross my mind. As I stand atop the Venus Lighthouse, Menardi at my side, my mind rushes back to these things. As my knees buckle beneath me, as I fall backwards towards that brilliant beacon, I remember everything. There is some haze around me, some warmth flooding my mind even as my fingers freeze and I am plunged into ice. I do not know where I am, anymore, or when I am, or even if time applies to me, if the laws of space apply to me.

I am in Sol Sanctum, and I am trembling with excitement. It has taken a long time to get here, and has cost a lot of effort. But I am proud of my team. They are Prox's strongest warriors, a tough group. They are our finest men and women, hand-picked by me. Menardi stands near me, at once Prox's most cunning fighter and its greatest beauty. As we all catch our breath before triggering the final switch, I catch her eye. Now, I think. She thinks the same, and she smiles, her lips bright and luscious, her eyes gleaming with the same anticipation that I feel running up and down my skin.

The other warriors' faces are beaming. Many of them are young, just into their prime. They are in the best shape of their lives, and finally have a chance to use their skills outside of hunting and guarding the village. One is barely into adulthood. I look in his direction. He is watching me, gauging my every move, trying to imitate me. It is embarrassing sometimes, to have him worship me, but I cannot deny that I am flattered. I am the captain of this group, its leader. I was selected by our mayor, entrusted with this important mission. We are here to save our town from the mistakes of the ancient civilizations and from the inaction of the world's current inhabitants. We alone know and understand the danger, and of all the people of this world, we are the closest to being destroyed by the harmful effects of alchemy.

I give the order for the switch to be activated, and my troops act at once, throwing their weight against the statue in front of them. It grinds against the stone tiles of the floor, moving slowly until finally, with a last scraping groan, sinks into place in a groove on the floor.

The effect is immediate. The building shakes, and outside the sky darkens, and lightning flashes. We must leave immediately, the temple is collapsing. We were tricked! The ancient inhabitants of Vale were clever, set a trap for people like my group. I give the order, and we bolt for the exit. Running down the stairs, we reach the next room, and lightning darts wildly about, and out of the corner of my eye I see the boy, the one who idolized me, take a strike of electricity to the chest. He falls immediately, his eyes wide, his body smoldering. He hits the stone floor, his body spread-eagled, his lifeless face gazing forever towards Anemos.

I want to retrieve his body, return it to his parents who await him in Prox, but there is no time. I grab Menardi's hand and drag her forward, out of the building. Huge stones fall from the ceiling, and so many of our men and women are crushed beneath them, and I want to cry out and save them but there is nothing I can do. My brain works to control my legs, propelling me forward, taking Menardi with me. She looks back, at the mangled bodies, and tears are caught in her eyes. I look at her once, gulp, and pull harder on her arm, determined that if I save one person today it will be her. I focus ahead, we are nearly there, I do not know how many more have fallen; I hear only my steps and Menardi's behind me. The exit is in front of us. We are almost there, I reach open my hand to fling open the doors, and we burst into the world.

Trembling. The world is trembling beneath my feet. I am standing at the edge of what was once part of Gaia Falls, which is now nothing but a gaping void. In the blackness below me, in the huge, gaping gulf of nothingness, electricity darts from one place to another, a bright spark rending the horrible emptiness in two before being swallowed by the blackness once more. The sound carried to me on the wind is a horrible scream, a noise so terrible that I do not believe I will ever forget it. Looking upon this sight, I feel nothing, I am nothing. This, I am told, is what creeps inward every day, swallowing more and more of Weyard, slowly approaching our quiet little village. Can it be stopped? I do not know. It is such a horrible sight to behold, a thing of such magnitude and terror that I do not believe anything can be done. My idyllic view of the world is sapped from me as I gaze upon the destruction of the world.

The mayor stands next to me. He brought me here, today, telling me that there was something I needed to see. I expected to see some evidence of a great brutish creature. We had suspected that many of our recent misfortunes had been caused by some foul thing creeping out of the lighthouse to the north. I did not expect this. I never expected this.

"Saturos," mumbles the mayor beside me. "I need you to stop this."

I turn. I look at him to make sure he isn't joking.

"Stop this? Stop this great thing?"

"Yes. You are our finest warrior. You are one of our wisest men, our most thoughtful men. You are the pride of this village."

"But this," I said, "is something far beyond the control of a mere Proxian. This is something only the gods can deal with." I look again at the void. I cannot stop that.

"This," he says, "is the result of human action. Humans fiddled with alchemy, and became afraid of what they had unleashed, and extinguished the lighthouses that supplied the world with alchemy's power. They wanted no one to ever misuse it again." He turns to look upon the blackness as well. His face is lined with worry, his body hunched with age. "Saturos," he says again. "without alchemy, the world cannot survive. It is comparable to air, or water, or blood. The world needs it, as we need those three things. Without alchemy, the world shrivels, disintegrates. You see what is happening. The evidence is before you. And as long as the world is without alchemy, this gulf will grow wider and soon our people will be engulfed by it. I ask you, I beg you, you must stop this. You are capable of living up to this task. Humans sealed alchemy away. If they can do that, is it that hard to believe that Prox's greatest hero in generations could unleash it once more?"

I do not know what to say. This is too much, this is too huge, to lay upon my shoulders alone. I am used to burden, I am Prox's greatest hunter, its greatest defense, and its greatest scholar. I do not deny that I have been blessed with near perfection, and in thanks for such a blessing I do more than the average person. I take their burdens up and push myself to greater limits. I am used to hardship, and I am used to feeling alone, but I never felt as though I was not up to newer and tougher challenges. This horrible sight, this awful knowledge, has shaken my confidence. I cannot do this.

"I cannot do this," I say. Menardi looks up at me, her eyes shining with hope and fear and tears. Her hands rest on my sides, below my ribs, and my hands are on her shoulders, preventing her from moving closer.

"Saturos," she whispers, quietly. "I don't care about the hardships. I don't care that we are on a journey to save the world. Maybe we can't live in happiness until this is all over, and maybe we won't get that chance for years, but I just don't care. I love you, I need you to love me too."

We are standing alone on the cliffs outside the Suhalla Gate. I went for a walk to get some fresh air, away from the slumbering bodies of Sheba, Jenna, Kraden, and Menardi. Felix was sleeping outside the door as I left. He had insisted that he keep watch. He was always protective of Jenna, and with the added responsibility of the younger, less skilled Sheba, his natural watchdog tendencies have multiplied. He is a good boy. I have never regretted rescuing him from the river after our failure in Sol Sanctum. He is eager, and strong, and understands our quest even if he regrets leaving his childhood playfellows behind. He does not mention them, refuses to acknowledge their existence, which angers his sister to no end, but I do not blame him.

As I passed Felix, I headed for the edge of the cliffs. I gazed out into the distance and saw the peak of Venus Lighthouse in the distance. I looked at it for some time. It seemed so far, yet to be able to see it at all seemed nothing short of a miracle. Mercury Lighthouse had been astonishing, but Venus seemed like so much more of a conquest. Our enemy, Isaac, was a Venus adept. To conquer the lighthouse that would provide him with power would be satisfying. And my intuition, deep inside of me, suggested to me that at the pinnacle of that lighthouse, my clash with Isaac would come to an end. Once I reached the top and lit the beacon, my conflict with that boy would end. I could not wait.

While I mused and surveyed the landscape, I heard footsteps coming in my direction. I turned around to see Menardi standing in front of me, looking very nervous.

"Is something wrong?" I asked, my heart pounding somewhat. On the journey, because of the closeness we were forced to share, I admit that I began to fall in love with her. I kept these thoughts private, not because I feared I would be rejected or because I was not confident in myself, but because I believed that it would hurt her too much to ask her watch me risk my life constantly, and it would drive me quite insane if she should be hurt or killed as we traveled the world.

"Saturos," she said, avoiding eye contact with me, "have you ever thought of settling down one day, after all of this is over?"

I thought for a moment, forming the words I wanted to say before I spoke them.

"Well, yes, I have. I've thought about it quite a bit. I've loved this adventure, as hard as it's been. But once this is over, I want to leave the mantle to younger people. Once we return to Prox in victory or otherwise, I want to work on more domestic affairs, you know?" I smiled. "Help fix houses, help people with daily problems. Maybe one day I'll try to be the mayor and help people that way."

"You'd make a good mayor, I think," she said, grinning. "I agree with you. This is fun, and I'm so proud to have this task entrusted to me, but adventure isn't everything. I want a home, and a family, and a husband." She looked up at me then, her eyes glittering in the moonlight. "Saturos, I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I know that's really sudden, I know it is, but I can't help it. That's the only thing I know for sure in this world." She stepped closer, put her hands at my sides, nestled under my ribs. I put my hands on her shoulders to stop her from getting any closer.

"I cannot do this," I say, "this won't work. Menardi, do you know the danger we will be in? We will have to fight Isaac again soon. I know he's grown stronger. You know he has, and so have his companions. And if we meet him in the Venus Lighthouse his power could rival ours. I don't want to cause you any pain if I should die."

"I would feel that pain even if you reject me tonight," she says. "And I'm strong enough to face it, if it happens. But I will do everything in my power to make sure it doesn't happen. Saturos, just tell me if you feel the same way. I need to know."

I do not speak. All of the possible words I could say are darting through my head and for once I cannot catch and assemble them into a sentence. I cannot say anything. I lean in. I kiss her, I try to kiss her quickly but I can't. I know as soon as our lips meet that I need more, that I will always need more, that every moment I spend not kissing her is a waste. There is no longer any distance between us, and I have my arms around her shoulders and back, wanting to protect her from everything we are about to face. I know she wants and needs me, and I kiss harder, wanting her to know that I want and need her too. This is bliss. This is all that I have ever wanted.

All that I ever wanted was for him to like me. But here I am, the last guy in Agatio's group, picked last for his games all over again, because I'm younger than him and I'm kind of small. He's so big and strong, he's four years older than me, and he's the boss. He's the oldest kid in town who hasn't become a man yet so he's the boss. And he'll be the boss for another year until he turns fifteen and gets his first real sword. Until then he's going to keep telling us what to do and whacking our shins with his wooden sword he made himself. He's really smart. He can figure out things none of us other guys can, like how hard to hit a guy in the nose to make him start bleeding. None of us can't figure that out, but I can figure out other stuff, like where stuff goes and how many of certain stuff we need, and how many people we need to do stuff.

But he's way bigger than me, and he's bigger than everyone, so when he says we're going to have snowball fight and he picks another captain and they pick teams, he always makes sure I get picked last.

So now we're out here and I'm on his team which is good because he makes a mean, hard snowball, packs it with rocks sometimes which I think is dirty but he says, "it works, doesn't it?" which I guess is true.

I'm pretty good at this, I know how to hide behind big piles and stuff well. Agatio just makes his mean snowballs and hurls them as hard as he can and even though he's a big target no one can hit him because they get knocked down too fast.

It doesn't last long, he's too good. He's awesome. We won, obviously. And now a lot of guys are going home, they have to help with something, but he never does. His dad's a big hunter and his mom is a great cook so they never need help because they can do it themselves, so he's always amusing himself out here. I don't want to go home, my dad is probably there because he never goes on hunts anymore since mom died and he just lies around and yells at me so I don't want to go home.

So Agatio turns and waves his stick and smiles in a way I don't like, when we see something over near one of the houses that is interesting so we creep over to look. It's a little girl we know, with red hair, named Karst, she's maybe four years old and she runs around with us guys and tries to play our games, but Agatio likes to play dirty and even he won't play dirty against a girl. So he won't let her. We all knew she had an older sister but we never met her, she's really sick they say so she's always inside. But now we see her, and she's holding Karst's hand and Karst is leading her around and showing her things and shouting, "Menardi, Menardi, look!"

The older sister is kind of okay looking, for a girl, you know, and she has long blond hair and a kind of sad little face. She walks kind of slow and looks around a lot which I guess is because she hasn't been outside in a long time. Now Agatio knows he needs to be the boss of every kid, even girls, even if they can't play the games, so he needs to go over and show off and scare them some. So he's already hopped over the snow bank running towards them, and I just follow.

"Hey, Karst," he shouts. She looks over, starts grinning, and drags her sister over to him. He's so much bigger than them and me, we're all just standing in his giant shadow.

"This your sister?" he asks. Karst nods, and Menardi looks up at him unblinkingly. She doesn't look scared which I think is weird, I was scared of him when I first met him. "Well, nice to meet you." He grabs her hand roughly and shakes it and I know he's squeezing really hard on purpose and I can see her wince. "You ought to know," he says, puffing up like a bird, "I'm the boss of all the kids around here. That means you too. You have to do what I say."

"I'll do what I want, thanks," she says, coolly, staring straight at him. I gasp, he's confused. No one says stuff like that and gets away with it.

Even though Agatio has rules about girls, when they mouth off like a guy he doesn't care anymore. He's the boss, and you don't question the boss is what he thinks. So he gets really mad when she says that, and grabs her shoulder and points his finger right in her face and shakes her and yells at her some, and I don't like that. When she swats his finger away he gets even angrier and pushes her down in the snow and then Karst starts crying and he pushes her too, and that's not cool. He can push girls who aren't sick when they're picking fights, it's only fair, but not when they're sick like her and he definitely can't push a little thing like Karst. So I jump in front of him and wind up and sock him right in the mouth, and he starts bleeding and howling and hits me but I don't fall over and I hit him again in the nose this time. And the whole time he's shouting all sorts of stuff and all the other guys run over because they heard him and then we have a regular fight happening.

I feel really good even though blood is pouring out my nose and onto the snow so I give him a really good one right in the gut, and then tackle him and knock him over while he's reeling. When he's down I jump on his chest and want to hit him some more but he's ready and grabs me and we roll around, biting and clawing and punching and kicking. Right when I'm winning everyone gets real quiet. I look up and my dad is standing there, looking awful and smelling awful, his clothes all hanging and torn and his face dirty and his hair messed up. He grabs my arm, hard, and he drags me away, but I hear all the guys whispering behind me, saying my name, and I know Agatio is done as the boss. I'm the boss now.

I tried to be a good boss. I remember that. Even though my dad was horrible, he disappeared soon after that. I tried to forget him. Agatio's parents took me in, and I ignored his memory. I worked hard to help the other kids, and to play games fairly, and when I turned fifteen I worked whole-heartedly to help Prox and make it the best it could be. I believed then, that I could do anything. And I forgot that for a while, after I saw that gaping chasm past the lighthouse, and again when I lost all those men in the storm, and after that I never quite saw things so innocently again. But now, somehow, I understand things better. I have no feeling anymore, save for the sensation that Menardi is holding my hand, and that she is dead too. I am dead. Our secret skill, that we alone as Proxians have, has failed. We have been defeated by that boy, Isaac. I do not blame him. I am past such things. He believes in what he is doing, and I know he does not want to kill, but he could not help it. He did what he had to. We never let him believe that we weren't evil, anyways. Somehow, I think that made things more exciting. The sense of being chased, of being on the run, it made our mission that more pressing.

We haven't completed it. Felix will. I know he will. And he will take care of Sheba, and his sister, and work to save the world because he loves it, as I do. But that is his task now. My job is done. I knew, looking at this lighthouse, that this would be the end of my clash with Isaac. It seems it is also the end of my life.

I look at Menardi. She is smiling, weakly. I smile back. And we know. As our strength fails and we begin to fall, we lean backwards. Into alchemy. Into the lighthouse we worked so hard to reach. I stand atop Venus Lighthouse, Menardi at my side, and as my knees buckle, I remember. This is the beginning.

* * *

So, yeah. I hope I did a decent job. I wrote it really quickly, didn't even go back and edit. If you notice mistakes, let me know, definitely. Be nitpicky especially with grammar or spelling or punctuation. Other things, let me know what you felt was effective/not effective and stuff like that. There are probably some parts written awkwardly and some places where sentences are clumsy or incorrect or just off-putting. Thanks in advance. I've been writing more for some reason and if I need to improve that's more reason for me to write. So let me know.


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